


Hallelujah

by DarkeAngelus



Series: The Post X-Factor 259 Series [1]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, X-Factor (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Mojoverse, Mojoworld, first person POV, time paradox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 12:29:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkeAngelus/pseuds/DarkeAngelus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a continuation of the events of X-Factor #259 as Shatterstar and Rictor struggle to make things right in the Mojoverse before they can return to earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hallelujah

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt to make some sense of what was an extremely rushed, and sometimes confusing, Peter David one-shot and explore the revelations of issue 259 with far greater depth (and logic).

" _Baby, I've been here before_  
_I've seen this room and I've walked this floor_  
_I used to live alone before I knew you._  
_I've seen your flag on the marble arch_  
_And love is not a victory march-_  
_It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah._  
_Hallelujah, Hallelu_ -" 

"I love that song. Leonard Cohen, right?" commented a strained voice behind me. "You have a really nice voice, Rictor." 

I flushed and didn't want to tell her that I was singing the Jeff Buckley version, which came after her present time. Thinking about that brought back the reality of just how screwed up of a situation we were all currently stuck in. Looking down at the newborn baby I was holding in my arms didn't help my aching head any. The kid was sleeping and hardly making any fuss about the circumstances surrounding his strange birth. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised as my eyes traced that star pattern around the baby's left eye. Not a brand or tattoo after all, but a birthmark. 

Shatterstar's birthmark. 

My mind must have drifted looking at it because the next thing I knew, Alison Blaire had moved closer to me when she really should have been taking it easy. She had given birth to the boy yesterday under conditions that were less than ideal. I handed the baby over to her, feeling almost guilty, and stared at the two with troubled eyes. Dazzler was one of those ‘special’ ones who stood out in the forefront of my mind. Not because we had ever associated on anything other than on a purely nodding basis but because, in her day, she had been a famous pop diva almost on par with Lady Gaga. I’m still a headbanger at heart, so her type of music wasn’t never really to my taste, but the brilliant lightshows that accommodated her performances were legendary . . . and were what contributed to her downfall. When she was revealed to be a mutant, her career collapsed like a house of cards. It was the same thing with Jean-Paul Beaubier and all of his skiing trophies. When he was outed as a mutant (than later as a gay one), he was stripped of his titles and accolades because super speed was one of his powers. He claimed to have never used them in competition, but then I think of Lance Armstrong and all the years of bullshit he got away with. And that jerk-off had been _human_. Northstar never really stood a chance under that kind of scrutiny. 

“You’re awfully quiet,” Alison said. “Are you worried about your friend?” 

I settled beside her and tried not stare at the kid, but it was next to impossible. “There’s no telling what’s running around out there. It makes sense that he wanted me to stay here with you but, yeah, I’m worried.” 

“He talks the same way as Longshot does. Is he from here, too?” 

“Uh-huh, but from a-a different time. It’s kind of complicated.” Just thinking about it made my head spin. “We got to know each other when we were with X-Force.” 

Her blue eyes widened. “I thought he looked familiar! He used to have really long hair and wore a helmet. Shatterstar, right?” 

“That’s him.” 

“It’s funny. That was the first name that Longshot suggested when he found out I was pregnant,” she tittered while I tried not to puke. “Then he found out that someone on Cable’s team had already taken it. He was rather put out. I was relieved. I thought it was ridiculous.” In a hushed voice, she said, “Don’t tell your friend I said that.” 

“Don’t worry. I’ve said it to him often enough,” I had to betray a smile at the memory. Any time I made a quip about Star’s arena name, the jerk shot right back about the way I had spelled my code name. I mean, _what the fuck?_ English wasn’t exactly my first language and I was a shitty speller at the best of times. We got into some funny arguments about it, in the old days. 

‘The old days’. Damn, that hits a nerve. I've known Star since we were teenaged punks playing soldier under Cable’s leadership. Then we struck off and became notorious vigilantes in Mexico against my gunrunning family. After that marked a period I don’t like to think about too much; our break-up, X-Corporation, M-Day, X-Factor, a failed suicide attempt or three. Dark days, man. Brutal. Most times it was a chore just getting out of bed. 

Then Shatterstar came back and it was a light switch turning on in my head. It took a kiss from my kick-ass manic red-headed ex-lover to finally snap me out of my funk and make me see reason for the first time in years. I had lost my powers, yeah, but I was also smothering under a lie and it took his presence to get me to gather the nerve and jump out of the closet. I was gay; a depowered mutant working a dangerous nine to five job among peers with powers. It took Star to make me realize my self-worth as a man again. To realize I was still important to someone else. _That I actually freakin’_ _mattered_. 

I was wearing a stupid half-smile on my face when Alison suddenly blurted out; “X-Force was still a new group when Longshot and I came here to help the Cadre Alliance. You’re supposed to be eight years younger than I am. Why do you look older now?” 

“It’s just my disguise throwing you off,” I joked, stroking the unkempt beard I’d grown under Mojo’s imprisonment. The gladiator kennels didn’t permit amenities like shaving cream or Bic razors. None of the slaves I’d fought in the arena displayed any trace of a moustache or beard. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen so much as a hint of a five o’clock shadow on Longshot’s face. Ever. Now I understood why Shatterstar’s facial hair took so long to grow, and was pretty sparse when it did. That just made me start staring at the kid again. _Crap._  

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m being serious, Ric.” 

My shoulders sagged. I suppose it didn’t matter what I told her if Star was determined to wipe her memory. I still wasn’t too keen about that idea but decided to fess up if only to help pass the time. My buddy had been gone for quite awhile and I was starting to get worried. Talking might help get my mind off it. “I’m from the year 2013. Me and Star were in a battle against Mephisto and that _cabron_ zapped us back to-” I paused and extended my arms. “- _here_.” 

“Mephisto?! You mean-“ 

“The ruler of Hell. Looks like a Tickle-me-Elmo on meth. Pure evil. _That_ Mephisto.” 

“Why would he do something like that?” 

“Honestly, I thought he intended to kill us. I saw Star go up in flames and just lost my head and charged in blindly after him. Hellfire doesn’t burn. I found that out the hard way. It just makes a great light show. Mephisto used it as a dimensional time warp to zap us to Star’s home world. I’ve been stuck here for roughly four months, if my beard is any clue. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Star’s been here way longer.” I haven’t had the chance to talk to him about it, but I think his hair length gave it away. It had taken him seventeen years to grow it to the length he had when we crossed paths on Earth. Nearly three feet. For the year he had been with X-Factor, it had grown a whole two inches. Now it was almost past his shoulders. That crazy fuck Arize told me that Star had dropped out of nowhere ‘a long time ago’ and it’s driving me crazy to think that the man I loved might have been trapped here longer than I had. 

“That still doesn’t explain why he did it.” 

“Honestly, Ali, I really don’t have much of a clue. I’m alive. So’s he-“ I found my eyes straying back to the baby when I said that and had to force myself to look away. “I can’t really knock it, truth be told. I’m just relieved.” 

“Still teamed-up after all those years. He must be a good friend.” 

“He’s more than that. I’m gay, Alison. Star’s my boyfriend.” It was amazing how easy it was to say those words now. I was hardly even fazed by the look of evident shock on her face, or how her cheeks flushed with a hint of color. I had to smile at her response. 

“Oh wow, Ric. I didn’t- I-I had no clue-“ 

“It’s cool. I was still a kid when you knew me. Remember? I didn’t come out until a year or so ago anyway, so it’s still a shock to those outside of the X loop. Northstar got married to his husband in New York last year-” 

“Married?!” 

“Yeah, it’s legal now in a couple of States. Things are more progressive in Canada. Mexico? Ay, ay, ay. Don’t ask. Karma’s a lesbian now. Mystique’s bisexual. You wouldn’t believe the new crop of mutants and young Avengers running around. Being gay seems to be the rage.” I had to shake my head and chuckle just thinking about Wiccan and Hulkling. 

“And the attitudes towards mutants? Has that improved?” 

I fought to keep the neutral look on my face. What to say to her? About the genocide on Genosha? About M-Day? Utopia? Bastion? All the mutants who had been murdered or died between Dazzler’s time and mine? “Yeah, it’s better,” I chose to say and didn’t add: _Because there are fewer of us for humans to deal with now._  

The answer seemed to work. “You hear that, little man? When we get back to earth, you’re gonna have a ball!” Alison squeezed the baby tighter and rubbed her cheek against the tiny forehead, which contained a few wisps of bright red hair. The jostling woke him up and he blinked owlishly, exposing bright blue eyes that I knew would fade to a captivating silver color over the years. Then the kid hauled in a breath and let out a howl loud enough to make me wince and cause Dazzler’s powers to start making multi-colored sparks shoot into the air. 

“You have to get him to quiet down. There’s no telling who or what might be outside.” 

“I-I don’t think he needs to be changed,” she said, obviously flustered. She patted the infant’s behind and checked the dirty rags he was wrapped in. 

“He’s probably hungry,” I said. 

Her cheeks predictably flushed. “I figured we’d be back to earth before he was born. I wasn’t planning on. . .  I-I don’t really know how to-to-“ 

The kid’s howls were reaching a pitch I was sure could shatter glass. “I’d suggest you whip out a boob and let nature take its course. And fast.” 

She slipped an arm out of her top and then looked at me in embarrassment, which was kind of odd considering the eyeful I’d gotten helping her give birth to the kid. I could have reminded her that tits weren’t exactly a turn-on for me but decided to spare us both any more drama and just turned around. “I’ll give you two some privacy and go outside for a bit. Maybe I can find something for us to eat.” 

“Thanks Ric,” she murmured and by the time I reached the door, the baby’s crying had stopped. Yep, he was just hungry. Or captivated by the view. Star was a breast man when he wasn’t gobbling cock. 

I went outside and was struck again by how small the building was in comparison to its inside dimensions. The Mojoverse was a sickening blend of science and magic, so physics pretty much went out the window here. It was full daytime but you’d never know it for the heavy smog that hid the sky from view. All of the vegetation was twisted and sickly and my empathic link to the earth spoke of a world that was tainted right down to its molten core. Not too far away was the massive dome that marked Mojo’s empire; a megacity of depravity, greed, and constant, senseless violence. Shatterstar had gone back in there to search for Longshot and I was scared to death that he had been caught and mind-wiped again. I wasn’t worried just because he was my ticket out of this hell hole, but also because I didn’t have Arize’s knowledge of the equipment to reverse the damage, if there was any. I know that someone had to stay behind and keep an eye on Alison and the baby, but Star had been left weak from Arize’s reboot and then had to teleport us to safety. I wish he’d rested for a bit before striking off after Longshot, but I could sense the urgency coming off of him in waves. Thanks to Mephisto’s bullshit, Star and Longshot were now stuck in a time paradox; each being the other’s source of life. If the baby didn’t get put back to where he belonged, who knew how that would fuck up the time line when we got back to earth? Assuming, of course, there’s even an earth to go back to. For all I know, it could be an extension of Hell by now, making Mojoworld pretty tame by comparison. This wasn’t a place I really wanted to set up stakes, truth to tell. It made my head ache. 

There was the sound of a branch snapping off to my left and I crouched down and began powering up. _“Who’s out there?”_ I asked in Spanish, because there was only one person on this planet who would be able to understand it. 

Thankfully, the answer came back in kind: “ _One fekting exhausted warrior_.” Star emerged from the dying foliage, wearing the armor of an Imperial Protectorate as a disguise and carrying a variation of a duffle bag over one shoulder. Unless Longshot was chopped to pieces, it didn’t look like he was what was in the bag. 

“Man, you look like crap,” I said. 

“Feel like it,” he muttered, taking off the helmet and running a distracted hand through his longer hair. Seeing that length on him actually made me think back to the days when it had hung down to the small of his back. 

“I guess you didn’t find Longshot, huh?” 

“No, I found him.” 

I was waiting for more of an explanation and when I didn’t get it, I waved my hands in the air. “So, where is he?!” 

“Under control of Mojo and Spiral. There is nothing I could do to him that they have not done already,” Star said, staring down at the ground. 

“Oh.” That meant he had been mind-wiped. “I’m sorry, buddy.” 

“It’s alright. Being near him made me feel . . . odd. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could before I was captured. Again.” 

“I was kind of worried that might have happened,” I admitted. “What’s in the bag?” 

“Some provisions I managed to scavenge for you, Dazzler, and the infant.” 

“You can call her ‘mom’, you know. Try it on for size. You just might like it.” 

His face was shockingly blank as he said, “What’s the logic of bonding to my maternal unit if I’m going to wipe her memory, Rictor? I see no point.” 

“Because you have a mother. You weren’t grown in a tube. You weren’t created by Whitecoats. You were _born_ , Star. By the woman in there!” I pointed to the building. “Your _human_ mother.” 

“And fathered by my clone,” he remarked in that same wooden voice. “The whole thing is distasteful. I’m some warped by-product of paradoxical incest. If I ever get my swords near Mephisto again, I’m going to cut off his _foojkies_ for doing this to me.” 

I grabbed his arm and felt him tense up on me, glaring down at the contact as if I had violated his personal space. His left eye actually flashed in warning and I let go in a hurry. Oh, this was _so_ not good. It was like dealing with him when he had first joined X-Force all over again. Even his English was rough and laboring, as if he hadn’t spoken it in-in- 

“How long have you been stuck on Mojoworld, Gav?” I found myself asking. 

“Time is different here,” he muttered, side-stepping the question. 

I’d noticed that each day seemed to be off by a few hours in one direction or another. Still it was close enough to Earth to keep a rough count. “How _long_?” 

He regarded me closely for a long moment and then looked away. “I’m not sure. Arize kept me sedated whenever he conducted his examinations, which was quite often.” 

“He used you like a fucking lab rat,” I said bitterly. 

“Arize is the creator of _all_ ,” he said in a low voice. “To speak ill of him is almost committing blasphemy.” 

“He’s not God. He’s just another Spineless prick with his own twisted agenda. Mephisto dropped you into his lap and he treated you like some Roswell space alien. He’s a manipulative son of a bitch.” 

“What’s done is done,” Star muttered under his breath and unshouldered the bag, offering it to me. He was trying to change the topic. “You and the Dazzler salvage what you can from this while I try to affect repairs to the equipment.” 

I made no move to take it. “Give it to her yourself. After that, you’re going to get some rest.” 

His eyes narrowed again. “Rictor . . .” 

“My name’s Julio.” 

“I know what your name is.” 

“Yeah, but you haven’t said it to me once since you got your mind back. I know it’s probably been awhile, but we went through a dry spell before and you didn’t forget my name. Or this-“ I started reaching for him again and this time he shied away from me completely. 

“This place changes people,” he said, hefting the bag over his shoulder and stepping around me to go into the building. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “And never for the better.” 

“What the hell does that-“ He let the door almost slam shut into my face as I followed him. “ _Hey!_ Stop being a dick and talk to me, damn it!” I continued hollering at him as he marched down the hallway, but bit it back when we entered the control room. It looked like feeding time was over and Alison had the baby over her shoulder and was rubbing his back. She looked nervously at Star, who had lowered his face, deliberately letting his hair obscure his features. She offered me a faltering smile. “You were right. He was just hungry. He’s almost asleep again. What a wonderful, little-“ 

“You’re probably hungry, too. Eat,” Shatterstar said, dropping the bag at her feet and immediately moved over to the machinery, giving her his back and ignoring her on purpose. 

I hunkered down beside Alison, trying really hard to keep my cool. Flying off the handle would only alarm her and the kid and possibly tip Star over the edge that I knew he was walking on. He was barely holding things together and I had to give him his space, no matter how much it hurt me to do so. 

“Is everything all right?” Dazzler whispered. “Where’s Longshot?” 

“He couldn’t find him,” I said, rummaging through the bag. Not much sense upsetting her with the truth. “I’m sorry, Ali.” I handed her a bottle of water and a bag of what looked like some kind of nuts. There were a couple of clean blankets and towels and we swathed the infant in some of the new material to keep him warm. 

“I can’t get over how light he is,” I marvelled, holding him while Alison got out of her ruined clothes into an outfit Star had provided. She wore a blanket over herself to preserve her modesty while she changed. Again, I don’t know why she bothered but, _hey_ \- If I understood women, I’d be fucking _them_. “Despite being early, he looks like a little heifer, but he weighs about as much as a preemie.” 

“He must be like Longshot. Hollow bones. And look at this.” She pulled the material gently away from his stomach and I saw what she was pointing to. Star had cut the umbilical cord with his sword and I had tied it off with a piece of scrap wire. It had already dried up and fallen off. “He’s a quick healer.” 

“Five fingers and toes, too. This, though.” I lightly traced the star birthmark with my finger. “The edges are so sharp it looks like it could have been done by a tattoo artist. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

“Me, either,” Alison said, biting her lower lip. “I wonder if there’s some way to remove it?” 

I looked at her. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Star was staring at her, too. “Why would you want to do something like that?” I asked. 

“When we go back to earth, I want him to have a normal life. This,” she pointed to the birthmark. “It will make him stand out. You know what kids are like, Ric. They’re cruel to others who look different. He’s the son of a mutant and an alien. Who knows what powers he’ll develop when he reaches puberty? I just want him to have a chance and be happy, even if it’s just during his childhood.” 

“Taking that star away from him would be like, I dunno, chopping off Angel’s wings or something. It’s who he is and what makes him special. Leave it alone, Alison.” I glanced over at Star and he spared me a pained look before turning to the machinery again. I handed the baby back to her and walked over to him. “Hey, you okay?” I whispered. 

He still had his head down and I cursed the long hair because it wouldn’t let me see his face. “That . . . that was a nice thing to say,” he said thickly, fumbling with a control board from the main computer. 

“I said it because it’s the truth. It was one of the most striking things I first noticed about you. That and the hair. It’s one of the reasons I love you, Gav.” 

He dropped the board and gripped the console with trembling fingers. He spared me a faltering, miserable glance. “... Still?” 

“Always.” 

“I don’t deserve it. I tried to kill you!” He slammed a fist down on the console and muttered Cadre under his breath. I was able to translate it and it didn’t calm my nerves to realize he was putting himself down. Shatterstar had _never_ done that before in all the time I’d known him. _“[Stupid, stupid idiot. A crècheling in his fifth season would never have acted with such dishonor-]“_  

“Star, you gotta calm down-“ 

“ _[Fekting Mojo!]_ Fekting Arize! _FUCKING MEPHISTO!”_ he screamed up at the ceiling, his hands balled up into fists. 

 _“Star-!”_  

I caught him when he suddenly went limp. I was kind of prepared for it, knowing that he was just about at the end of his endurance. The mood swings were a tip-off. Maybe he hadn’t changed as much as I’d feared. Just badly used. I hauled him over to one of the dusty pods and got him settled. He was out for the count. If memory served, he would be like that for a few hours until his healing factor recharged his batteries. It might be even longer than that. Lord knows what he’d gone through before we met up in the arena. It wasn’t something I wanted to think too much about. 

“Always gotta be the tough one,” I murmured fondly, moving the hair out of his face and kissing his forehead. 

“Is . . . is he alright?” Alison asked from behind me, making me jump. 

I shielded his body behind mine when I looked at her. “You really need to be resting, Ali. For Christ’s sake, you just gave birth yesterday!” 

“I’m an X-Man. I’m a member of the Cadre. Nothing keeps me down for long,” she said in a surprisingly hard voice. “Why are you acting so strange? I just want to see him.” 

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” 

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake-“ She made a flicking gesture with her fingers and a spot of white light exploded in front of my face, knocking me off balance. With my guard down, she moved in around me like a cat. “I don’t know what all the fuss is . . . about . . . _Oh._ Oh _god!_ ” 

The whole time Dazzler had been in labour, Star had pulled his hair over the left side of his face, hiding the mark from her view. I had just exposed it when I laid him down. Alison looked at his face, to the baby, and back again. She stumbled back and might have fallen if I hadn’t caught her by the shoulders. “Ali-“ 

“That’s my son,” she whispered. 

I swallowed. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. Or how much I could. 

She turned on me and yelled, “That’s my son!” Both the baby and Star stirred at the strident pitch to her voice and I motioned at her to keep quiet. “Tell me the truth, Rictor!” 

“Yes, damn it. Keep your voice down. He’s a light sleeper.” When I said that, I had to motion to them _both_. God, what a balls-up this was turning out to be. 

“How is that possible? Even if he’s from the year 2013, like you said, he should only be-“ 

“Star was raised in the Mojoverse one hundred years in the future,” I told her in a hushed voice, leading her away from where he was sleeping. “He was sent back in time by the Cadre when he was seventeen to recruit the X-Men to help them defeat a different Mojo ruling his world. He ran into Cable instead who tricked him into joining X-Force.” 

“So where were Longshot and I during all of this?” She dared to ask. 

“You never knew he existed. You were made to believe you miscarried.” 

“By who? Who would do such a terrible thing?!” 

“Mojo.” That villain made for a convenient scapegoat. I couldn’t very well tell her the truth, could I? That her own son was the person who wiped her memory clean of his existence. Thanks to Mephisto, it was now out of all of our hands. 

“He- Mojo took my baby? What did he do to him?” Her eyes flashed to where Star was sleeping and back to my face. 

“Ali-“ 

“I saw what he did to Longshot’s friend Rita. Did he-he change him, too? Twist him into something he shouldn’t have been?” 

 _Yes and no,_ I thought bitterly. Mojo didn’t alter his body, but he sure fucked up Star’s head, that’s for sure. “All I know is that he made Star fight in arenas as a gladiator. He used to have a mutant power similar to yours. He could take sound and channel it through his swords as shockwaves. It’s changed. He’s a teleporter now.” 

Her response was predictable. “He can get us out of here!” She said desperately. 

“Sure, sure, Alison, but he’s completely tapped out. Just let him get some rest, okay? Then we’ll see what we can do.” 

Her eyes were filling up with tears. She spared a glance to the corridor that led to the exit. “I don’t want to leave Longshot behind not knowing where he is. But I have to get my child to safety. He would understand that.” She looked at me. “You understand that too, don’t you, Rictor? We have to leave as soon as possible.” 

“There’s no guarantee there’s even an earth left to go back to,” I said sadly and told her about the Hell on Earth war that had been going on before Star and I were zapped to this dimension. I wondered uneasily if Mephisto was watching us right now on some jazzed up Hell-spawned jumbotron. The sick bastard could be beating off right now while he watched the lives of my friends get ripped to shreds for all I knew. I hope Tier clawed his guts to shreds. I hope everyone is safe and okay. I hope that Star and I can get our lives back on track. That’s all I can do right now: _Hope_. 

Dazzler and I ate and drank and made some distracted small talk before the stress of the situation got to her and she had to go lay down for awhile. I’d never spent any time around her and was amazed by how strong-willed she was. Longshot was a nice guy, but laid back and kind of flaky at times. It was pretty clear that Star had inherited the majority of his characteristics from his mother. Aside from the hollow bones, there was very little of Longshot in Star. Or vica versa. Arize had been true to his word and made them distinctly different beings. Not replicates of each other at all. 

That got me thinking about all of the other members of the Cadre, even the hybrid one with the horns. I got the impression from Arize that Star had been the template for all of them. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Star wasn’t just the ‘father’ of Longshot, he was the original source of the entire rebel resistance; essentially, the well-spring of an entire race. Mojo had captured some of them, used his magic to fuck around with their composition, and then created offshoots from their original design; all with different looks, roles, and abilities and all brainwashed to serve him. Add in a hundred years to Star’s real time, and all of those clones would have bred and evolved further. I bet if a genetic sampling were done, each and every one of them could be traced back to Shatterstar in one way or other. It was mind boggling. 

Star hadn’t been kidding when he said Arize was the creator of _all_. The bastard just needed the right specimen to provide him with the tools he needed to get the job done and fucking Mephisto gave it to him. That enabled Mojo to prosper by manipulating the creations into performing for his perverted games and gain all of his wealth and power in the process. It explained the prophecy of Shatterstar being the martyr slayer of Mojo V who would finally free his people. Star was the one who had put this whole twisted circle-of-life into motion (completely against his will) and, because of that, he was the only one who could close it. 

Fuck, I hate the Mojoverse. 

Baby Star managed to sleep for four whole hours before he woke up bawling for a titty again. This time, Alison was more at ease with the breastfeeding process and I saw for myself that Longshot was, indeed, a lucky guy. Dazzler looked so happy and devoted to tending to the kid; her entire body was radiating different colors of the spectrum. She was bonding closer to the baby with each passing minute and it was making me feel like shit knowing Star was going to sever that bond and take the child away from her. That almost put him in the same league as Mojo or Spiral. Yeah, yeah, I know: time stream paradox, putting shit back in order, _yadda yadda_. You have to understand that all I saw at that point in time was a happy young mother who obviously adored her baby. 

Adult Star woke up an hour and a half later. I wasted no time getting to him before he started putting things into motion. “There has to be another way.” 

Usually, Star was wide-eyed and bushy-tailed the instant he woke up, but he was only staring at me as if I was speaking a different language, disheveled and still not looking a hundred percent yet. “What . . . ?” 

“Wiping Dazzler’s mind,” I hissed into his ear. “You can’t go through with it. We have to come up with something else.” 

He shook his head. “There’s no other recourse. Mephisto messed with the time line. Things must be put to right.” 

“Why can’t all four of us just go back to earth? What’s the worst that can happen?” 

“I’ll blink out of existence when we reach the other side of the teleportation portal,” he said bluntly. “Perhaps you might, too.” 

I scowled at him. “Hey, this is your fucked-up time loop. Leave me out of it.” 

“You’re involved in it whether you like it or not. Do you think I don’t know about your failed suicide attempts?” 

Shit. It felt like my stomach just dropped down into my shoes when he said that. I’d hoped that nobody would have told him how bad off I was before he joined the group. I had been prepared to take a ten story swan off a building before X-Factor intervened. Later on, I was determined to eat a bullet to prevent Theresa from being taken away by Val Cooper and her goons. And Shatterstar knew all about it, probably for quite some time. It made me embarrassed and angry. “So? What about it?” I mumbled. 

“Your depression was escalating, Julio. If I hadn’t appeared when I did, who knows how far you would have gone or how successful your next attempt would have been?” 

“What are you trying to say? That your coming back saved my life? I seem to remember hauling your ass out of the fire a couple of times. Doesn’t that count for anything?” 

“No, because where a time paradox is concerned everything is reduced to speculation, making this argument pointless. All I know for certain is that if we go back, _they’ll_ be all right,” he nodded over to where Dazzler was changing the baby. “But I’ll cease to exist. All events that involved me will have different outcomes. You won’t remember me. Nobody will know that there was ever a Shatterstar on your world.” 

I studied his face carefully and my shoulders slumped when I realized, “You’re telling the truth.” 

He nodded. “I can open a portal and the _three_ of you can go-“ 

“I’m not going anywhere without you.” 

He stared at me in surprise and then appeared to struggle with his emotions for a moment. His voice was husky when he said, “Then we stay here while Dazzler and the baby go to earth.” 

There was a long pause between us before I broke the silence. “That’s it? There’s nothing else we can do?” 

“No. Let me do what I have to. It’s already happened. I need to ensure that it happens again, that’s all.” 

“Don’t pass it off like you’re doing something routine, like laundry. You’re messing around with people’s lives here. Yours _and_ Dazzler’s. You know what you went through before you came to earth. What Mojo V did to you. Are you really prepared to put yourself through that hell again?” 

“At the risk of losing you if I choose any another course?” Star’s face became set in stone. _“Absolutely.”_  

What the fuck could I possibly say to something like _that?_ I backed off and let him go to work on Arize’s equipment, assisting him where I could. I was really good with computers, even if this technology was way above my pay grade, and between the pair of us we were managing to boot up the systems one by one. 

Dazzler approached him while he was underneath of one of the consoles, trying to reroute power to a terminal. “. . . Shatterstar?” she said. 

There was a loud ‘ **Thud!** ’ as Star abruptly sat up, banging his head a good one underneath of the console, followed by the exclamation: _“Fekt!”_ He was cradling his forehead and squinting at her when he hauled himself out. 

“Are you alright?” she asked. 

“I have a healing factor,” he said curtly. I had told him that Dazzler had connected the dots about who he was and he hadn’t been too keen about that. Right now, he was looking at Alison’s knees, deliberately avoiding any kind of eye contact. I stopped working to watch the show. 

Probably to try and get into his line of sight, Alison sat down beside him, cradling the baby in her arms. Star didn’t move away from them, but the tension was clear in his face and body. His eyes flicked uneasily to her, the kid, the floor, the ceiling, and back again. Like something a trapped animal would do. “My name is Alison Blaire,” she said. 

“I know who you are,” Star muttered. 

“Do . . . you have a name? It can’t be just Shatterstar, is it?” 

“I have a designation. Gaveedra Seven.” 

While her face twisted to accept that, I added, “I just call him Gav.” 

“It is preferable to the alternative,” Star agreed. 

“The girls used to call him Shatty-buns.” Revealing that little tidbit earned me a resentful glare. I just smiled back. 

“Gav.” She was testing the name, trying it out. “Rictor told me that you were raised here, but in the future.” 

“That’s correct.” 

“And-and were you treated all right?” 

Star’s answer to that was simply, “I survived,” which made me wince and caused Alison to go pale. She wasn’t stupid. She had been here long enough to know how Mojo treated his slaves and Star’s conduct wasn’t much better than trying to have a conversation with a robot with a limited vocabulary and hardly any emotional depth. He was damaged goods and Dazzler could clearly see that. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice cracking at the end. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you.” 

“There are many to blame for my fate, but you are not one of them, Alison,” Star said with surprising gentleness in his deep voice. 

“Aren’t I?” She looked down at the baby she was holding and when she looked back at Star, there were tears in her eyes. “I forgot you! I was supposed to protect you, raise you, and I didn’t know you existed. What kind of mother does that?” 

“One who was forced to do so completely against her will. You could not have stopped it. There’s no technology or telepath on earth capable of reversing the effects of a Mojoverse mind-wipe. Don’t waste the time languishing in guilt over something you were powerless to prevent. I am alive. That’s all that should matter.” 

She scrubbed the tears from her cheeks with a shaking hand. “You don’t hate me?” 

“Why would I?” 

“For-for not being in your life. For not helping you. Earth must have seemed a strange, foreign place and you had to adjust to it all on your own.” 

“I was not alone. I had team-mates . . . and Julio.” He flashed me a weak, faltering smile. Seeing it, I got the impression that he hadn’t had much opportunity to do that in quite some time. Hair-length aside, he looked tired and old; something his healing factor should have prevented. Whatever Arize or Mojo had done to him had left a shell of the man I loved. We needed to get out of here. We needed to get back to earth, regardless of the state it might be in. This place was sucking the life out of him. 

“I’m glad you found someone. I’m happy that you’re both together. I just want you to know, I don’t care one little bit that you-that you’re . . . uhm . . .” 

“Tall?” Star asked, bewildered by her hesitation. 

“Gay,” I said. 

Star scowled at me. “I’m bisexual. Then again, after you watched that week-end marathon of Torchwood, you informed me that I was actually _omni_ sexual because I-” 

“For Christ’s sake, Gav! We’re not gonna talk about that here!” I raged at him. 

As if the conversation had never taken place, Star turned back to Alison and, straight-faced, told her, “Apparently, I am _fekt_ sexual.” 

Dazzler looked back at him in disbelief and suddenly burst out laughing. 

“And amusing,” the warrior added in that same bland tone, which just made her laugh harder. I had to admit, it was pretty fucking funny. Grim circumstances aside, it made even me chuckle. 

“You’re adorable,” Dazzler said when her spell of giggles had passed. “And handsome and smart. I’ll make sure I do everything I possibly can to guarantee that you’ll have a safe and happy home to grow up in. I promise!” 

Hearing that, Star’s face tightened up again and he drew away from her. “Thank you. That’s . . . a wonderful thing to say. I know you-you’ll do your best. If you don’t mind, I’d like to return to repairing this structure.” 

“Oh! Okay.” She looked up at it. “What does it do?” 

“It’s a power supply that the Cadre can use. When they rally their forces back together, they’re going to need it.” He ignored the disbelieving look I flashed him. Since when had he become such a convincing liar? 

“That makes sense. So, when it’s fixed you’ll take us to earth, right?” She got back to her feet and stared at him urgently. 

“That’s right,” he said in a more somber tone. When she began to turn around he suddenly asked, “What’s his name?” 

Dazzler looked back at him. “What?” 

“The child. What were-what are you going to name him?” 

She looked down at the sleeping bundle in her arms for a long time, considering. “I was thinking about naming him after my grandfather. But now that I’ve met you, I don’t think Theodore would be a good fit.” 

I swear to God, I almost swallowed my tongue when I heard that. “All fear the ferocious sword-wielding gladiator Theodore!” I cried out and started laughing. Star just looked nauseated at the prospect. 

“I kind of like the shortened version of your name that Rictor gave you,” she continued. “I think I’ll name him Gaven. Is that okay?” 

Star swallowed and struggled with his words for a moment before managing to say, “I think I would like that very much, Alison. Thank you.” 

She flashed him a wide, happy grin and went back to where she had made a comfortable spot for her and the baby. Star watched after her, lost in thought, before he realized I was staring at him. “Shut up and get back to work,” he grumbled, climbing back under the console again. 

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” I said, turning back to the mess of wires I was trying to sort through. I couldn’t resist adding with a smile, “. . . Theodore.” 

“. . . _vehjka_ . . .” I heard him mutter under his breath. 

It wasn’t long before we got Arize’s bewildering mish-mash of electronics working and what happened next happened fast. The moment the main console powered up, Star ran over to the pod that Dazzler was napping in and slammed the lid shut, locking her inside. By the time she snapped awake and slapped at the glass, he was back at the panel again, fingers flying over the keyboard. In a few seconds, Alison was out for the count as the pod filled with gas. 

I was sitting on the floor holding the baby and staring at him in disbelief. “What the _fuck-?_ ” was about all I could manage to get out. 

“I had to act quickly,” he said, typing commands into the system. 

“Well, shit! You could’ve given me a head’s up, y’know!” I snapped. At the look Star passed me, I realized why he hadn’t. “You thought I was going to throw a wrench into your plans, didn’t you?” 

“The thought crossed my mind.” 

“I helped you get this piece of junk online, didn’t I? I could have sabotaged it six ways to Sunday if I’d wanted to. Don’t you trust me?” 

No answer to that. When I climbed to my feet, his right hand flashed up to grab the hilt of one of the swords strapped to his back. He didn’t unsheathe it, but the threat was clearly there. It felt like my heart was breaking in half at the suspicious way he was staring at me. “What the hell, man?” I said, trying to keep the hurt out of my voice. 

The realization of the situation must have hit home because he dropped his hand and looked ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry, Julio,” he murmured. “I just need time to adjust to the fact that it’s really you.” 

That got me thinking again about how long Shatterstar might have been stuck here. I was beginning to think it might have been longer than my measly four months. Maybe a _lot_ longer. “You’re not alone in this. Whatever happened to you, whatever you’re going through, I’ll help you with it. Do you believe me?” 

A muscle was jumping in the corner of his jaw. “I want to,” he managed to say. 

This was what Mephisto had intended for our torture: For Star, having to deal with all of this personal shit. For me, it was having to watch him go through it. Killing us would have been far too simple. I’d felt rage before: At Cameron Hodge, at my relatives, at Cortex. I had never felt hatred on such a deep level like I did for Mephisto right then. He had taken the person I loved most in the world and turned him into a shadow of his former self. Right that moment, I swore that motherfucker was going to pay for what he’d done. Somehow, someway, I was going to get my revenge even if I had to use my power to burrow straight through the earth to gain entrance into his Hell to do it. 

Even though I wanted to go over to Star, I managed to stay where I was and not crowd him. “Everything’s going to be okay,” I said. 

He shot me another one of those nervous, distrustful glances and then went back to the computer without responding. I looked down at the baby who seemed to be aware of the tension in the building and was sleeping fitfully. When one of his tiny hands wrapped around my finger, he squeezed it so hard that it brought tears to my eyes. He would have been a handful for Dazzler to deal with, I thought, and looked over at the pod she was trapped in. “How long will it take to . . . make her forget?” 

“It’s already done,” he said, surprising me. “The cerebral interface erased the events of the last forty-eight hours. I placed the subliminal message of ‘miscarriage’ directly into her subconscious. When she wakes up, her mind will automatically fill in the blanks and she will believe that she lost the child.” 

“Won’t the fact that she won’t remember how it happened tip her off that her thoughts were messed with?” 

“No, because it will be such a tragic event that she will purposely block it out rather than try to rationalize specifics.” 

“How the hell do you know that?!” 

“Because that’s obviously what she did.” He turned to look at me. “Did you get any indication from Longshot that he ever suspected otherwise?” 

Thinking back, I had to admit, “No,” because Longshot just always looked sad when the topic of children came around. I remembered some undercurrent of rumors among the mutants close to the X-Men that Dazzler had lost her child and nobody wanted to bring the issue up around her. There had never been so much as a whisper of Mojo or Spiral being involved. 

Because they hadn’t been. The culprit was standing right in front of me. “All this time, you knew,” I said in a bitter tone. 

He frowned at me. “Knew what?” 

“About this! Right from the first time you popped into the Danger room, you knew how all of this shit was gonna play out from beginning to end and you never said a fucking word. All that time we were together and all you did was lie to me. You son of a-“ 

“I did not!” he cried. Damned if he didn’t actually look wounded by the accusation. “I wasn’t aware of _any_ of this!” 

“But you _told_ me-“ 

“It was not until I’d returned to my time! After that business with The 198!” 

It took me a moment to try and figure out what he was talking about. He had battled the X-Men in the Civil War, working with Domino and Caliban on orders from Captain America to help the mutants imprisoned at Xavier’s estate. At the time he had been about the same from the reports I’d heard; Long hair, using swords, wearing his helmet and armor, and had the same kill-or-be-killed attitude, if what happened to Micromax was any indication. One year later, he resurfaced in John Maddox’s house with short hair, a new costume, different swords, and more interested in fucking than fighting. It took the following month in Detroit to convince myself it was actually him and not some Mojoverse doppelganger. “In the car ride back from Vermont, you said you’d gone back home." I had to shake my head. “I don’t know what you were thinking going back there, amigo. After all the shit Mojo put you through? I just don’t get it.” 

"It was not entirely my choice. I was ailing and needed extensive genetic retooling." 

"What’re you talking about?" 

"Julio, you are not the only one who lost his power on M-Day," he said, fixing me with a miserable gaze. 

I reacted as if I’d been bitch-slapped. "You ... _What?_ No! I saw your name on the list of The 198!" 

"I used the vibratory shockwave power so rarely no one was ever the wiser. I refused to correct the assumption. To do so would have been a potentially disastrous tactical error. I couldn’t understand how that force managed to affect me until now. I’m half-human. I believe that, because the other half of my lineage is alien and one from a different dimension, the Scarlet Witch’s spell made my genetic structure unstable." 

"How unstable?"

"I was injured during the battle outside the bunker in Nevada. The wounds would not heal and became infected. I think I was dying." 

"And you didn't think to come to one of us for help?!" I hissed at him, trying my damnest not to wake up the kid. Baby Star was just as loud a screamer as his adult self, if not worse. 

Star’s face reddened a bit. "After what I did to MicroMax, I figured I had burned my bridges with the superhumans of Earth. I fled to one of Cable’s abandoned safe houses and hid there.” 

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, mad as all hell. And a little guilty in the bargain. Star and I had stopped communicating after our break-up in Mexico and it didn’t settle my mind to think he had chosen to suffer alone rather than reach out to me or our friends for help when he had needed it. He must have still been holding onto one hell of a grudge. “You, Caliban, and Domino were pardoned by O.N.E. for your actions. You guys were set up right from the start. The following investigation with MicroMax revealed that he intended kill you and you retaliated in self-defense. The three of you were regarded as heroes. The only ones to stand up to Stark and that whole crazy Sentinel business.” 

Star looked visibly taken aback by the news. “Oh.” 

“Yeah, ‘oh’, dumbass. You were hiding for _nothing_.” 

“It didn’t really matter by then. All I knew in my deteriorating state was that I had lived long past what should have been a glorious cancellation. No gladiatorial warrior has ever lived for more than twenty seasons. At that time, I was twenty-three. I'm _old_ , Julio. I wanted to die." 

I’ll admit, that admission knocked the wind out of me. It made me think back to that night on the building's ledge when I’d been ready and willing to jump to my death. I had lost my power, I felt utterly alone, and I couldn't stand the feel of that void sucking the heat from my heart any longer. I just wanted the pain to go away. Somewhere out there, Star had been enduring the exact same agony of body and spirit. "Madre de Dios, Gav. How the hell could you think something like that?" I couldn’t stop feeling like a hypocrite as I said the words. "What ended up happening?" I asked in a softer voice. 

"My fluxuating genetic code must have triggered something in the Mojoverse. Spiral always seems to know my whereabouts whenever it suits her. She came to investigate and took me back to Mojo V. Honestly, I wasn’t in a state to put up much of a struggle. He ordered the Whitecoats to heal me. My genetic problems were corrected, my mutation redesigned, and my swords reforged to act as a conduit for the different energies." 

"You're talking about the teleportation power." 

"Yes. It was a remnant of the Benjamin Russell possession*. Mojo magically added the restriction of my needing an alternate anchor to initiate teleport just as Russell did, purposely restricting my ability to wield it freely. I was his prisoner again.” 

“He’s the one who cut your hair,” I said through clenched teeth. “That bastard shaved you as punishment.” 

Star ran a distracted hand through his long hair and only nodded. Among his gladiator ranks, hair length amounted to status. When he had defected to the Cadre, his ponytail had marked him as an elite warrior. Being dropped back into the slave pits with a bald head would have made him a target of ridicule and violence among the other fighters. It must have been pure hell for him. 

“While I was under his rule, Mojo V told me everything about what would happen when I returned to earth. I don’t know how he got his information. It’s possible Spiral told him. She’s aware of all past and future time lines simultaneously. It’s what drove her insane. I didn’t fare much better being forced to hear about it. For twenty-three years, I believed I was a creation of the Whitecoats designed to kill for sport. Then I found out I’m actually half-human and destined to become the template of an entire race. Mojo messed with my thoughts while I was under his control. I don’t remember if I escaped or if he sent me back or what happened when Cortex took control of me. All I remember is you snapping me out of it. It wasn’t until Arize rebooted my mind yesterday that everything Mojo told me came back.” 

“Star, you said that you’ve been looking for clues. Waiting for shit to happen. Like Layla.” 

“It’s not like Layla at all. Subconsciously, I just had hunches. What you humans call déjà vu. If I had known _this_ was going to happen, do you seriously think I would have allowed it? Or that Longshot wouldn’t have put a stop to it?” 

“Longshot?” 

“One of his powers is psychometry. If I had known how events were to go, he would have known it, too, the first time he touched me. I know that he gained _some_ degree of insight from my psychic imprint. That was how he knew we were related, but he wasn’t sure in what way. But about Scattershot? Our ‘deaths’ by Mephisto? He was as clueless as I was.” 

“Scattershot was that prick you fought in Seattle,” I realized. “Who was he really?” 

“My clone. Another ‘son’. Twisted by Mojo V’s magics into a parody for entertainment value. I killed him, but creations of Mojo never stay dead for long. I suspect I’ll have to battle him again someday.” 

“Fucking Mojo!” I roared and this time the baby woke up and started bawling. I started rocking him and managed to get him to settle down after a few stressful minutes, but it made me realize our time was limited. He would be hungry again soon and we were all out of titties and milk. “You’d better finish up whatever you have to do with Alison and fast.” 

He didn’t move. “Are you still angry with me?” 

“This is a lot to take in, amigo,” I admitted, trying to come to terms with everything I’d been told. “But I know none of it’s your fault. We’re cool.” 

He stared at me for a few seconds with his patented Irish Setter look and then something must have clicked on in his mind. He blinked in surprise. “Oh! I remember! ‘Cool’ means things are all right. That’s good,” he said, and turned back to Arize’s computer array. 

“Yeah, good. Great,” I mumbled under my breath. I looked down at the baby with the star birthmark on his innocent little face and then over to the pod where Dazzler was unconscious. It didn’t look like she was having pleasant dreams. She was twitching in her sleep and her face was drawn tight into a rictus of pain. Then I watched Star working away at the alien machinery. I thought about how he had attacked me in the arena and how he had reached for his sword just a few minutes ago. “Yeah, things are just great.” 

When Star was finished with whatever the hell he was doing on the computer, he unsheathed one of his swords and hacked the circuitry I had sacrificed the tips of my fingers to splice back together. The monitors winked out and the unit powered down with a loud groan. I was stunned by how silent the huge room became. The cover to Dazzler’s pod unsealed and Star lifted it and picked her carefully up, depositing her on one of the blankets on the floor and covering her up. Then he began picking up all scraps of rags and foodstuffs and it took me a few seconds to realize that he was removing traces that we were ever there. He shoved it all into the roughshod duffle bag he’d brought and hoisted it over his shoulder, casting the room a wary eye for anything that might stand out. 

“We’re . . . just gonna leave her there? Like that?” I asked uneasily. 

“Her purpose is not yet complete on this world,” Star said, withdrawing both swords and crossing them in front of him. He looked at me expectantly. “Do what you did before.” 

All of the stress of the last four months must have finally hit me that instant. I just stared back at him in complete confusion. “. . . Huh?” 

“When Mojo attacked Arize and the rebels, we escaped and jumped ahead in time. You’re my telepathic anchor. We’re here because of you.” 

“Are you on crack? How the hell would I have known when or where Dazzler was gonna give birth to you? I was thinking of our X-Factor building. Specifically, our friggin bedroom, if you wanna know the truth. I haven’t slept on a bed in four damn months. _You’re_ the time traveler! You even said so!” 

“I meant that purely in the context that I came from the future. I am not Spiral. I can’t breach time barriers. I can only travel distances.” 

“Then how the hell did we get _here?_ ” I said in frustration, waving an arm around and then pointing to Dazzler for emphasis. 

Shatterstar appeared to muse it over for a moment. “Arize did many tests on me; right down to a sub-atomic level. Do you think he altered my teleportation ability?” 

“I dunno, but I wouldn’t have put it past him. What strikes me is that it seems pretty coincidental that we appeared just as Alison was going into labor, don’tcha think?” 

“What are you saying, Rictor?” 

I stared back at him and then tapped the area below my left eye. I knew that he grasped what I was getting at when he snarled out, “Fekt.” 

“Yeah. Fekt.” 

His eyes darted uneasily around the room. In a low voice, almost a whisper, he asked, “What do we do?” 

“Teleport us. I have a sneaking suspicion where we’re gonna end up.” 

He cast me one of those calculating looks again, but I guess I must have gained some numbers on his trust meter because he actually did as I told him without any argument. He created the X-shaped portal and we charged through it. I had time to catch one brief glance at Dazzler’s unconscious body before everything turned white and we emerged into some kind of medical bay. Two things happened simultaneously: The baby started screaming and Star dropped to his knees and keeled over, almost impaling himself on one of his damn swords. 

“Star! What’s wrong?” When I reached down and rolled him over onto his back I was stunned. The temples of his hair had gone gray and there were lines around his eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before he teleported. I was positive of it. It looked like he had aged twenty years in just a few seconds. _“Star!”_ I hollered, slapping his face and not being too gentle about it. I was close to freaking out and having the kid squalling directly into my right ear wasn’t helping the situation any. 

He muttered something in Cadre and tried to hoist himself up, failing at the effort. I had to help him sit up. He shook his head to clear it and suddenly leaned over and threw up on my boots. Damned if the baby didn’t spit up all over my chest. Instead of bitching about what a shitty day I was having, it dawned on me that they were both sick and it had to be for a reason. “What’s happening, Star? What’s going on?” 

“We can’t both occupy the same time . . . My time,” he coughed, struggling to marshal his strength. “We’re cancelling each other out. We need-need to get him into the Source.” 

“The _Source?_ What're you talking about?” 

He waved to the area behind me and when I turned it felt like I had been sucker punched. Rows upon rows of tubes were stacked against the wall, reaching a height that had to be about fifty feet high. There were a few that were dark, but the rest glowed a murky, sickening yellow and inside of each of them was a little kid. The ones along the bottom row seemed to all be babies not much bigger than Dazzler’s. The row above them contained toddlers, and so on, until the top-most section contained children that looked around four or five years of age. All of the gestation chambers were hooked into a central processing unit that was monitoring their vitals, keeping them nourished, and feeding them battle and archival information. I hadn’t seen anything like this since I saw the movie The Matrix and had laughed out loud about how phony it all looked. 

Man, I wasn’t laughing now. 

Star gripped my shoulder and hauled himself to his feet with sheer force of will. He staggered over to the console and called up some data screen. He looked down at the single dark tube to his right. “Gaveedra Seven was culled this morning.” 

“Culled . . . ? You mean they-they killed the baby?” 

“Yes. It was not thriving. Place the child inside that gestation chamber while I rewrite the data-” 

I hugged the crying infant to my chest and backed away from him. “No way, man! I’m not gonna stuff him into that little coffin. Look at all those poor kids! We’ve gotta do something to help them.” 

He fixed me with a stern look. “There is nothing we can do, Julio. We’ve come full circle. Place _me_ in that chamber where I will develop and grow and continue with my life as destiny foretold. It’s already happened once. It needs to happen again for everything to be set right.” 

“But this isn’t right! _None of this is right!_ At some set time, you’re gonna spill out of that thing brainwashed with bullshit and spend the next seventeen years risking your life for the sake of senseless entertainment. It’s all so _wrong!_ ” I was close to breaking down. I know what hell Star’s childhood had been. What Mojo and his perverted freaks had done to him. They brainwashed and violated and used him until all that was left was an emotionless killing machine. It took six years on earth to get him to come around and now he was going to have to go through all of that again. It wasn’t fucking fair. 

Sensing my reluctance, he extended his arms. “Give me the child, Rictor.” 

“I’ll do it. I’ll fucking do it! Just give me a minute.” I looked down at the shaking infant and kissed him on his left cheek, below the star birthmark. “I’m sorry, Gaven,” I whispered. “You never got a chance at happiness and I’m so damned sorry. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.” I knelt down and unwrapped him from his blanket and laid him into the open tube. The kid was crying and thrashing his little arms and legs in protest. I felt like a total shit. 

“Thank you, Julio,” Star murmured. 

I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve and had to turn away. “Just hurry the fuck up.” In the background, I heard Gaven’s cries become muffled as the chamber sealed. Then I had to squeeze my eyes closed when the sounds became choked gargles as the tube filled up with that piss-yellow liquid. After that was just silence except for the sound of Star typing commands into the mainframe. 

“Gaveedra battle model. Lot Seven,” Star was reading what he was inputting out loud. “Specifically designed with hollow bones, healing factor, heightened strength, varied augmented abilities. Five finger design for sword use as specialty weapon. Possible latent mutation. Branded early with star as identifier of unique status-“ 

“You couldn’t just say it was a birthmark?” I had to ask. 

“It would be viewed as a deformity," Star murmured. "He’d be culled.” 

I whirled around and stared at him in disbelief. “Just for having a mark on his _face?_ ” 

He stared back at me sadly. “We are creations of Mojo. The only things we can have are what he gives us.” 

“Yeah but, you’re _not_ a creation.” 

“ _He_ doesn’t know any better,” Star said, staring at the seventh tube. Dazzler and Longshot’s baby was floating peacefully inside, sedated by the liquid. Cables with suckers were attaching to him at different parts of his body like robotic leeches, taking and giving whatever he needed. “He’ll grow up thinking he’s just like all the other slaves, although designed differently. It won’t be until he’s twenty-three years old and dying alone in a safe-house on another world that Spiral will bring him back here and Mojo V will tell him the truth of who and what he is. Two years after that, he’ll have to go through what I just did all over again.” 

He looked at the gestation chamber and bit his lower lip and then turned back to the console. I saw him eying a black triangle on the touch screen. I couldn’t read the language; it was in some other Mojoverse dialect, but the color tipped me off to what it was. When I saw his hand start to reach for it, I jumped forward and caught it, stopping him. “Don’t do it.” 

“It might be for the best,” he said in a hollow voice. “If I let this happen then Mojo wins.” 

“No, Star. It's if you _don’t_ that he wins. Without you, there’s no rebellion. No Longshot. No threat to him or his empire.” 

He shook his head. “Nothing makes sense to me anymore,” he said in an unsteady voice. 

I was still holding his hand and, when he didn’t react negatively to that touch, I pulled him close and hugged him. For a few seconds, I felt his body go stiff before he finally relaxed to the contact. It took even longer before he moved his arms and laid his hands hesitantly above my hips. I repeated what I had said to him after he had almost drawn his weapon on me. “You’re not alone in this. What happened to you, what you’re going through, I’ll help you deal with it. Do you believe me?” 

I was heartened by his response. “Yes, Julio.” 

I pushed him back and held him by the shoulders, examining his face. He still looked sick and far too old. We couldn't stay here for much longer. “Do you have the strength to ‘port us back to earth?” 

"Will we even be _allowed_ to leave?" He asked bleakly. 

"I think we've provided enough entertainment to satisfy that perverted fuck. Let's go, if you think you can do it." God, he looked so _awful_. 

He bent to pick up his swords and fell down to one knee. His arms were shaking with effort when he hoisted his weapons and crossed them in front of his body. He didn't look at me when he said, "Rictor, I swear on my blades that I will get you back to earth." 

There was something in his voice that filled me with a sick sense of dread. I gripped his shoulder and squeezed it. "Star . . ." 

There was a blare of an alarm and when I turned around I saw that an amber light had started flashing above Gaven's chamber. 

"He's still suffering from my presence here," Star told me. "If the light changes to red, he- _I_ will be culled. We have to leave now. Think of our bedroom again. _Hurry!_ " 

I did as he told me. All I wanted to do was go back home and pull him down into our bed and hold him. The impulse wasn't even sexual. I just wanted to hold onto him because I wasn't just his anchor. He was mine. For those four months I was Mojo's prisoner, Star had been the reason I kept on going when I'd just wanted to give it all up. Even before this whole mess, he had motivated me when I just wanted to go back to my old ways and hide; hide from what I was, hide from a world that was sometimes too violent and too damn confusing. Hide from the responsibilities that came with being a mutant tied to the almighty motherfucking X. I squeezed my eyes shut to bring that image into as sharp a focus as possible. _"Do it!"_  

I saw the brightness of Star's portal flash behind my closed lids. I was still holding onto his shoulder and gripped the armor guard and hauled him through as fast as I could. I didn't open my eyes again until it was dark and I looked around, expecting the worse. The X-Factor building was in complete ruins. I had forgotten all about Guido and Jezebel thrashing the place before the Hell Lords dropped the hammer. The perimeter of the mess was marked off by tattered police caution tape that looked like it had been there for awhile. As shocked as I was by the loss of our home, I was stunned that the rest of the area appeared unscathed. Nathanson's building, the lawyer who was set up across the street, was still standing. So were all the others including the little coffee shop down at the corner where I used to go for daily coffee runs back when I'd been a powerless gofer. Cars were driving back and forth with their usual impatient speed and I could plainly see the lights of the buildings in Manhattan. The night sky was overcast and it was drizzling rain, not blood. The only things flying in the air were helicopters, not demons. There were no sirens, or screams, or fires. It was business as usual. 

"Except for our building, New York is just as we left it," I said in a soft, awed voice. "I don't know how but, man, I'm not gonna knock it." I threw my head back and laughed out loud. "You got us back home. Way to go, amigo!" I looked around and then down at my feet. Shatterstar was lying face-down on the broken bricks and wood and not moving. "Star? _Gav?!_ " 

I dropped down beside him and hauled him over onto his back. He wasn't breathing. When I felt for a pulse, there wasn't one. "Nonono- No way, buddy. No fucking way! It's not gonna end like this. _You hear me?!_ " 

When teenagers had been learning bullshit like Mathematics, Economics, and Geography, I had been learning how to build bombs, hotwire assault vehicles and, most importantly, get trained in triage and medical aid meant for the field. My mind went crystal clear and I went straight to work, ripping open his armor and started with the chest compressions. Then I checked the airway, tipped his head back and breathed for him. Round and round it went. My entire body was soaked in sweat in seconds. Even as I went through the motions, I also knew the futility of what I was doing. Hardly anyone ever comes back from CPR. It just preserves the body for defibrillation and advanced life support. Even if EMS miraculously showed up in the next three to five minutes, Star still only had a minimal survival rate. 

Despite those grim facts in my head, I worked on him for over fifteen minutes. He was a warrior. He was half-alien. He had a healing factor. I figured something would kick in and he would suddenly come around and weakly slap my hands away, muttering how I was a 'silly vehjka' for worrying so much. It didn't happen. Exhaustion was setting in and I was starting to hyperventilate. We were in shadows in the building ruins and no one from the street could see us. "Help!" I called out, but all that came out was a rusty croak. "Oh god, somebody please help us!" 

I lasted for maybe five more minutes before I slammed my fist down on Star's unresponsive chest one last time and bent over him, crying. He knew he had been dying in the Mojoverse. He had deliberately used up all of his power to get us -to get _me_ \- back home. I wanted to get back to earth, but not like this. _Any way but this-!_ "Come back. Oh god, please. Come back, Star . . . _Please!_ " 

The only response was a hoarse caw, startling me. Sitting at Star's feet was a crow. It ruffled its damp feathers and stared at me as if waiting for something. I pitched a piece of brick at it, missing it by a mile. "Fuck off, you buzzard! He's not dead. _He's not!"_  

 _"Och. Rictor, calm down,"_ spoke a voice over my left shoulder. It was distinctly feminine, but had an echoing quality that wasn't quite right. Even so, I recognized it immediately. "Theresa-?" 

 _"Hullo, me boyo,"_ she said, kneeling down beside me. Her skin was gray and her eyes were blank orbs but her hair, a brighter red and even more vibrant than Star's, waved around her head even though there wasn't a hint of a breeze. She was wearing a green tunic that was decorated with elbow-length gloves and knee-high boots, the edges melted out into armor that resembled black feathers. Around her forehead and waist were adornments of solid gold. She looked absolutely glorious. _"Ye made it back from the Mojoverse. Congratulations."_  

"I did, yeah. Buh-but Star . . . He-he's dead, Terry," I choked. "He didn't make it." 

 _"Nonsense,"_ she said with a calm smile. _"He's just sleeping."_ She laid the tips of her gloved fingers on Star's exposed chest and there was a flash of light that made me squint. At the contact, Star's back arched and his mouth parted wide as he took in a choked lungful of air. He kicked out in spastic reflex and managed to lean over to his side, coughing in great whooping gasps as he struggled to catch his breath. _"See? What did I tell ye?"_ she said in that same conversational tone. 

I hauled Star's trembling body close and pulled the hair away from his face. He was terribly pale and still laboring to breath. But he was alive. _My boyfriend was alive!_ I hugged him fiercely and stared at her with wide, tear-filled eyes. "Thank you." I could only mouth the words because I had lost my voice to the enormity of emotion I was feeling that instant. Relief. Love. Even fear. Because the woman kneeling beside me had once been one of my closest friends. Now, she was something . . . _more_. "Thank you, Terry. Whatever price I have to pay-" 

She pressed a finger to my lips. " _Shush. I'm not that kind of Goddess. Once upon a time, ye were prepared to die for me and my wee unborn babe. It was a debt I was more than happy to repay. Ye remember our old X-Force slogan?"_  

"We take care of our own," I whispered. 

 _"Aye, that we do. I'm going to take ye both somewhere safe, Ric. A place where Star can heal and ye can relax. It's been too long for both of ye. Let's go."_ Before I could even open my mouth to question, she laid a hand on both of our heads and I felt my surroundings dim and fade. All heard as I slipped into oblivion was the sound of beating wings. _Angels,_ I was thinking as my thoughts faded to blackness. _They’re real._ _Angels are real. Son of a-_  

I woke up to the sound of wind chimes. 

Back in the days before my powers surfaced and when I used to think gunrunning was a game all normal adults played, there used to be a set of clay chimes outside of my bedroom window in Mexico. I always loved that earthy clanking when the wind hit them just right. It would lull me to sleep whenever I had bad dreams. The chimes I heard now were metal and more melodic than the ones I remembered, but no less comforting. It was a sound I associated with home. With safety. 

The bedroom I woke up in was painted teal with white wainscoting along the bottom part of the walls. The nightstand and dresser had an antique quality to them and the green curtains were billowing slightly from the partially open window beside the bed. After a year of living in a mortuary, I was startled by how clean everything was. Draped over me was a quilt that looked like it had been made by loving hands and a colorful throw rug on the floor. I was completely out of my element, but I didn’t feel like I was in any danger. A decade of being a mutant had given me an almost precognitive sense whenever there was danger nearby and nothing was tripping it off. I almost succumbed to the urge to lie back down and go back to sleep before I remembered what happened the night (?) before. Theresa’s appearance had been like a dream. And _Star-!_ He had been so sick. He actually died before Terry brought him back. _Where was he?_  

Just as I was jumping out of bed, there was a light knock on the door. “You decent, Ric?” called a woman’s voice. Not Terry’s, but one I knew almost as well. 

“Layla?” I noticed I was still wearing my Mojoverse battle clothes. Man, I was going to burn them the first chance I got. “C’mon in.” 

She opened the door carrying my singed duffle bag that must have been salvaged from our devastated headquarters building. It looked like it was packed with my gear. Scarcely before I acknowledged that discovery was the sight of her slightly rounded belly. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them: “You’re not gonna blame _that_ on me, are you?” 

She laughed as if she had been expecting to hear a smart-ass comment like that coming from me. Knowing Layla, she probably had. “No, you can relax. Jamie’s the daddy.” 

“Is he ...?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. 

“He’s alive and well. You’re at our farm in Lawrenceville, Kansas. Theresa brought you and Star here last night-“ 

“Star.” I interrupted her. “How is he?” 

“He’s ... okay,” she said after a pause. Not ‘fine’, not ‘great’. Just ‘okay’. It didn’t do much to settle my nerves. “You can see for yourself after you get out of those clothes and take a shower. You really stink.” 

I grabbed a handful of fabric and sniffed it and had to grimace. The slave kennels weren’t that big on laundry; one outfit a week. And water was rationed. All my cell had was some crummy sonic shower thing that didn’t work more often than it did. I don’t know how Shatterstar had managed to survive seventeen years of that miserable existence. Four months had been almost enough to break me. 

Layla and Jamie had salvaged what they could from the X-Factor ruins, including a few changes of clothes for me and Star. When I was washed and dressed, she appeared with a pair of scissors and helped me with my beard. I was glad to be rid of that moth-eaten thing. She even offered to cut my hair and I took her up on the offer. While she worked away, I heard about what happened to the others. The team hadn’t emerged unscathed, which was typical of our group. Little Tier was dead, murdered by Guido who was the new Lord of Hell. That was hard to take in. Guido of the smiles and dirty jokes who had been a great friend; at least until I came out and his humor took a nasty turn I didn’t care much for. Particularly when it was at Star’s expense. I guess everybody has a dark side when they’re pushed far enough. Losing his soul and being rebuffed by Monet had been Guido’s downfall. 

“It’s hard not to blame myself,” Layla said, as she evened up my bangs. “I’ve tried to weigh both consequences in my mind; bringing Guido back or not, but if I hadn’t done it Earth would have been lost.” 

“So it was Guido who reversed all the damage to New York?” 

“According to Theresa, yes. He even apologized to Rahne and brought Monet back to life. I think there’s enough humanity left in him so that he won’t be the threat Mephisto was. At least, I hope that’s the case.” 

“Poor kid.” I was thinking of Tier. “Barely lived six months, and most of that time he was being hunted by Darwin. What a lousy way to end up. When things have settled down here a little, maybe I’ll go to Vermont and pay Rahne a visit.” 

“Settled down. You mean with Star.” She was finished playing barber and handed me a mirror. I had to admit, she had done a great job. It was nice to see my ears again. I rubbed my smooth cheeks and looked up at her. “How is he, Layla?” 

“As well as can be expected, all things considered,” she said. “Go see for yourself.” 

The Madrox farmstead had become neglected over the years Jamie played detective. When I stepped out into the back yard there were half a dozen dupes reshingling the roof, several more were painting the house. Another was mowing the lawn and when he saw me, he shut it off and ran over. I guessed this one was the real thing. 

“You look a hell of a lot better than when you showed up last night. I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said, shaking my hand and moving in to give me a friendly slap on the back. When he stepped away, he was grinning from ear to ear. Marriage and being a prospective father brought out a side of him I hadn’t seen since Theresa had been pregnant. I tried not to dwell on that memory for too long. It was too painful- For a lot of reasons. 

“Playing Old MacDonald now, huh?” I asked, smiling. “And you managed to turn Layla into a farm wife. Not too shabby, amigo.” 

“I’m done with the life or death heroics, Ric,” he said, walking with me to my destination. “I just want to settle down and live a normal life. I want to watch my kid grow up safe and happy. This is the place to do it.” 

“After all we’ve been through, I don’t blame you,” I said in agreement, but his words made me think about Dazzler and what she had wanted for Gaven. Mutants didn’t do ‘normal’ very well, but I didn’t have to tell Jamie that. He knew it just as well as I did: You just had to grab onto what you were given and hold onto it for as long as life let you. 

“You and Star are welcome to stay. I can always use an extra farm hand. Besides, from what I’ve heard, you even have some midwife experience,” he remarked, adding a wink. “Might come in handy.” 

I facepalmed. “ _Dios mío_. If going through that with Dazzler didn’t enforce the reality I’m gay, nothing will. I don’t want to see _that_ again. Ever.” 

He laughed. “Fair enough. The job offer still stands, though.” 

“Jamie, I don’t know the first thing about farming!” 

“Oh, it’s easy. You spread shit over a field. Plant seeds in the shit. And harvest what grows out of it. It’s called ‘organic farming’. Folks at the Farm Market pay top dollar for that crap.” 

“I’ll pass. I was thinking about going back to Mexico. Find a nice little place near the coast and drop off the grid for awhile. It just depends ...” 

“On how Shatterstar is, I hear you,” Jamie said. We had stopped at the barn and he was looking up at it. “He stayed in the house long enough to shower, change clothes, and grab something to eat. Barely said two words to Layla or me. He’s been holed up in there ever since. I’ve looked through the windows a few times, but haven’t seen him. I think he’s hiding up in the hay loft.” 

It hurt me to think he was scared of associating with his former teammates. Perhaps worried he might hurt them. Or the other way around. Everything must be so confusing for him right now. “He was stuck in the Mojoverse longer than I was, Jamie. He’s almost right back to how he was when he first came to earth, but it’s worse somehow. I’m not sure what’s wrong.” 

“Go and find out,” Jamie said, opening the side door. “Try to get him out in time for supper. Layla plans on spending a whole day in the kitchen and not even Star would want to face her if all of her efforts go to waste.” 

I tried to think of the last time I’d had a home-cooked meal and came up blank. After four months of tasteless Mojoverse protein rations, it sounded like heaven. When I looked inside the barn, I couldn’t believe what was parked in there. “Holy shit, is that my bike?!” 

“You mean that two-wheeled piece of shit with no muffler and crappy carburetor? Yeah, I managed to get it out of the garage in reasonably one piece. You’re not allowed to work on it in here. It’ll probably explode the first time you try to start it up.” Jamie passed me a smirk and then looked up, nodding towards the loft. “Good luck,” he said, but I knew he wasn’t talking about the motorcycle. 

“Gracias, Jamie,” I said and he patted me on the shoulder and left. I looked around at the empty stalls as I walked further into the building, noticing how quiet it was in here. Then I eyed the wooden ladder that was nailed to one of the support beams. “Hey, Star? It’s Ric. I’m coming up,” I called, starting to scale the ladder to the loft. I waited for a response but heard nothing. I don’t know what I was expecting to be honest. Was he hiding in one dark corner with his swords drawn? Was he burrowed under the hay waiting to ambush me? I had a whole bunch of disturbing scenarios playing out in my mind, so you can say it came as a genuine shock when I cautiously poked my head up and saw him sitting quietly against some hay bales with a barn cat sleeping in his lap. “Hey,” was all I could think of saying in greeting. 

“Hey,” he said back, offering me a strained smile. His swords were off to the side. Still within reach, but the fact he wasn’t wearing them was an encouraging sign. He had his hair tied back in a ponytail and that struck me with a dash of nostalgia of our teenaged days; back when we had been young, and angry, and ready to take on the entire world; damn the consequences. He still looked pale and tired, and older than I figured he should be. It was obvious that he hadn’t shaken off Mojoworld yet. Hell, neither had I. 

I sat down next to him. He was wearing a pair of loose jeans and a T-shirt, carefully petting the cat. I could hear it purring. I looked at his exposed arms and saw the scars that Arize's needles and medical experiments had left on him that hadn't yet had a chance to fade. Christ knows what the rest of his body looked like. I had no choice but to drop my eyes and stare at the cat because looking at Star was suddenly too painful. My vision blurred and I sniffed back tears and I was stunned when my friend suddenly wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “It will be all right, Julio.” 

“That’s supposed to be my line, asshole,” I said, wiping my eyes and feeling my face burn with embarrassment. “You’re the one who went through hell. I’m supposed to be the one consoling _you_ , not the other way around.” 

“Forgive me. It appears I’ve forgotten much of the niceties of human behavior,” he said. I was hoping that was sarcasm in his voice, but it could have just been wishful thinking. 

“How come you’re up here?” I didn’t want to look over the edge, but it seemed like we were awfully high up. 

“I was uncomfortable in the house. It felt confining. This spot affords tactical benefits. If the building is gassed or firebombed, the smoke will rise and alert me, giving me time to escape through the window. I’m close enough to the roof to hear if someone has been airdropped onto it. The walls-“ 

“Okay, I get it. This spot makes you feel safe.” 

“Yes.” 

I looked around and saw a blanket folded on one of the nearby bales. “You get any sleep?” 

“I-“ He frowned, thinking about something. “I tried.” 

“Would it help if I stayed up here to keep guard?” I knew it wasn’t necessary, but Star didn’t and that was all that mattered right now. “I’ll keep watch, I promise.” 

“You don’t need to do that. I’m-“ He suddenly sneezed, shocking both me and the cat. It was such an unexpected sound coming from him. The cat jumped from his lap and ran away. Star looked bewildered and hurt. 

“You’re either allergic to cats or you’ve got hay fever,” I said. 

“Feral never made me sneeze. Is this material some sort of infectious substance?” He was holding a thatch of hay in his hand and staring at it as if it might burn him. “I saw no hazardous warning signs on the building.” 

“It just the pollen. Some people are really sensitive to it. All that teleporting yesterday stretched your system to the max, Star. You’re run down. You need to rest to give your healing factor a chance to catch up and repair the damage.” 

He passed me a guilty, almost ashamed, look. “...You will stay close?” 

“I won’t budge. I promise.” 

He appeared to seriously consider the offer and finally nodded to himself and got up, grabbing the blanket and laying down with his back to me. It was quiet for a long time and I was convinced that he had managed to go to sleep when he suddenly spoke up. “I gave up hope of ever seeing you again,” he said in a hoarse voice. 

I had been lost in thought and scarcely caught the words. “What?” 

He rolled onto his back and looked up at me and the emotion in his silver-blue eyes was staggering. He dropped the bomb with: “I was stuck in the Mojoverse for close to seven years.” 

All of the breath went out of me as if I’d been kicked in the nuts. I could only stare at him in disbelief. 

“Year after year, I scanned the vids and constantly escaped Arize’s lab to search the terrain trying to find you,” he continued. “I feared Mojo had you or that Mephisto had killed you or a dozen other horrifying scenarios. I finally had to force myself to believe that you were safe on earth just to spare my sanity. I stopped searching. I ... gave up. Without earth- without _you_ \- there was nothing for me to care about. I let Arize do as he wished, not that he ever asked for my permission in the first place. Nothing mattered anymore. Then I saw your image in a gladiatorial bout. Arize and the others tried to stop me, but I wouldn’t listen. For Mojo to put you through that. I was so _angry-!_ ” 

“You charged him head-on. Silly _vehjka_ ,” I chided lightly. I reached down to touch him and he let me. He leaned his cheek against my palm like a grateful dog that had found some comfort after a _very_ long period of abuse. “You were lucky he didn’t kill you.” 

“Perhaps it would have been better if he had.” 

“ _Oye!_ Don’t you _ever_ say shit like that! _¿Comprendes?_ " I snapped. 

“Arize used me against my will. I became Mojo’s slave, a thing I swore I would _never_ let happen to me again. I tried to kill you. Even after Arize rebooted my memories, I was not entirely convinced you were real. I treated you badly. I manipulated Dazzler’s memories and stole her child. I-“ He gripped double handfuls of hair and slammed his head back into the hay. “I don’t want these memories! They’re too much to bear. Theresa should have let me die.” 

And I was mentally pissing and moaning about my four months stuck in a gladiator kennel? Hell, it almost made what I had endured from The Right an All-Inclusive vacation. Star had endured that hell for _Seven. Fucking. Years_. “Listen to me,” I said in a hard voice. “If you give up now then it means Mephisto won. He’s the prick who set all this into motion just to fuck with your head. Stands to reason it would take a lot to break you. You’re conditioned to withstand torture. It took all those years to achieve his goal. Me, it doesn’t take much. You’re _my_ anchor, Star. It’s not the other way around like you might think. Without you, I’m done. It’s as simple as that. You brought me back from the brink when my powers were gone. Now it’s time you let me return the favor.” 

He stared at me for the longest time. Finally, he managed to say in an unsteady voice, “I missed you _so much_ , Julio.” 

“God, I missed you, too,” I whispered, leaning over him. I meant to kiss his cheek because I wasn’t sure if he was ready for any kind of intimacy, but he grabbed my head and kissed me with such intensity that I felt my heart skip a beat. I was sure of it. I eagerly kissed him back. “You’re gonna be okay,” I mumbled against his lips. “You hear me? Everything will turn out all right. It’s just going to take some time, that’s all.” 

“I believe you,” he said, holding me close and burying his face into my shirt because he didn’t want me to see his tears. His words came out muffled. “If you’re the one to tell me these things, then I will believe it. Because I love you.” 

For a moment, I couldn’t say a single word. I had feared that the most, of all the things he had been through. I thought that we were going to have to start our relationship all over again from scratch. “I love you, too, Gav,” I said, kissing him again and then we settled down in the hay. It was quiet up here in the loft; warm and comfortable. We were safe and this time Star must have felt that way, too, because he started falling asleep in my arms. 

“Gaven,” he murmured in a voice almost too low for me to hear. 

“Hm?” 

“Call me Gaven. It’s what Alison ... what my _mother_ wanted.” 

“That has a really nice ring to it. Sure,” I said, kissing the top of his head. “Go to sleep, Gaven. Everything’s gonna be okay now.” 

A semblance of a smile crossed his face and then he was asleep, just like that. I could tell by the way the tension in his arms eased and his breathing slowed. God knows how long it had been since he had felt this relaxed. Weeks? Months? _Years?_ I vowed that even if rats started chewing on my ass I wasn’t going to move an inch and risk disturbing him. I looked up at the roof and watched motes of dust drift in the sun beam that was slanting down beside us. It occurred to me that I was damn tired too, and felt my eyelids drooping. 

We were lying together in a trusted friend’s hayloft. Mutants don’t get very many happy endings and I intended to treasure this one for as long as I could. 

Reunited across space and time, we slept the day away. Just the two of us. 

_Hallelujah._

* * *

_The End_

**Author's Note:**

> * For better or worse, Benjamin Russell is canon whether PAD wants to accept it or not. The reference is included here because of my other story "A Year in Review" and because of the Mexico-based continuation I'm currently writing, which also references Russell quite a bit.


End file.
